Macedonia is on the brink of an ethnic conflict between the indigenous Slavic Macedonian population and a growing Albanian minority.

Ethnic Albanians now make up a quarter of the population and comprise the majority of Muslims in the country. The conflict exploded into international headlines when conservative protesters recently broke into the parliament and attacked lawmakers backing an alliance between the leftist Social Democrats and an ethnic Albanian party.

In the most recent elections, the conservative VMRO-DPMNE party won a plurality of seats, but the Social Democrats and ethnic Albanian parties formed a coalition that would allow them to marginalize the conservatives and install Macedonia’s first ethnic Albanian speaker, Talat Xhaferi.

The U.S. State Department, as well as the European Union, is urging the conservatives to step aside. The U.S. State Department issued a statement that “strongly condemn[ed] the violent attacks on members of the Macedonian parliament which followed the election of Talat Xhaferi as Speaker of Parliament.”

The State Department also promised to “work with the new speaker to support democracy and to help Macedonia move forward on its European path.”

But conservatives and nationalists in Macedonia see the stakes as nothing less than existential.

Xhaferi isn’t just an ethnic Albanian, but a defector from the Macedonian army who joined the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army during a rebellion in 2001. He received an amnesty as part of a peace settlement that ended the conflict, but Macedonians, especially veterans, are furious that a man who fought against Macedonia is now being installed as one of its leaders. Xhaferi’s appointment has been called “treachery” and a “disgrace to the army” by opponents.

Establishing Albanian as an official language in the country is one of the priorities of the new leftist Albanian coalition. Protesters also argue Xhaferi’s appointment was illegal because it reportedly did not follow standard parliamentary procedures.

The conflict in Macedonia also has deeper roots, both because Macedonia is a battleground in the geopolitical competition between Russia and the United States and because of the continuing efforts by Soros, an international financier and philanthropist, to undermine conservative and nationalist European governments.

More importantly, some of this money is coming from American taxpayers.

Judicial Watch recently filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department to obtain the full records of the department’s communication with the Open Society Foundation, as well as the money and support provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). According to USAID’s website, $4.8 million was provided to the Open Society Foundation in Macedonia between 2012 and 2016.

Even after President Trump’s inauguration, Macedonia’s Open Society Foundation remains a partner of USAID and continued to work together on various programs, including “Youth Engagement Support Grants” to encourage “participating in public life.”

According to the application, “priority” would be given to grant applications that aim to “ensure substantial engagement of women, girls, youth, ethnic or religious minorities, the LGBT community, or other vulnerable/marginalized groups.”

The American Spectator reports the Soros network in Macedonia, backed by American funds, also used Western tactics and trained protesters to destabilize the conservative Macedonian government. Having accomplished that mission, the federal government, even with Trump as president, is now pressuring the small nation to hand over control to an alliance between leftists and Albanians.

“Here in America, taxpayers fund so-called NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) who profit from importing Muslim immigrants deliberately brought in to change America’s culture and vote for leftists,” Hohmann said. “Now, in Europe, we see the United States of America, far from opposing the Islamic takeover of the continent, is facilitating it. We’re essentially helping Muslim Albania take over a small nation. And American taxpayers are bankrolling George Soros in order to carry it out.”

Hohmann noted the irony of Trump’s federal government funding the same kind of leftist groups that are trying to remove him from office at home.

“President Trump is actually funding his enemies, as well as the enemies of the West,” Hohmann said. “The Soros network is helping organize the protests against him in the United States the same way they are trying to drive out the conservatives in Macedonia.

“Leave aside the question of why our own government is going out of its way to destroy this small Christian nation. Why are Republicans in the federal government giving millions of dollars to the same groups trying to destroy them? And why are they cutting these checks at the same time they are claiming they can’t defend our own border because they don’t have the money?”

“It seems that, regardless of who is in the White House, we get the same anti-Christian foreign policy coming out of the U.S. State Department. If you were trying to destroy the West deliberately, what would you be doing differently?”

Meanwhile, protests continue in Macedonia, and there are calls for another election. One nationalist protester vowed they would continue to take to the streets.